


In that quiet way

by middlemarch



Category: Far from the Madding Crowd (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gift Fic, If You Squint - Freeform, Kid Fic, Marriage, Post-Canon, Vignette, allusions to Fanny Robin and Frank Troy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-31
Updated: 2019-07-31
Packaged: 2020-07-27 21:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20053147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "When did you know about Frank and Fanny?"





	In that quiet way

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZoeSong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeSong/gifts).

Gabriel never asked. He never asked during their brief engagement or on the eve of the wedding, when she was giddy and impetuous and would have answered any question only to postpone thinking about the next morning, the carriage ride and the cool grey stone, the white dress Liddy was pressing in the kitchen. He never asked when she was Mrs. Gabriel Oak in a gold wedding ring and nothing else, nor when she was nestled against his heart night after night, his hands gently stroking back the loose curls that escaped her night-plait.

Autumn passed, the leaves fell, gold and scarlet like Frank’s uniform. Winter passed, snow fell, like the white petals of a scentless rose, one Fanny wore in a coronet, a crown she cast away. Still, Gabriel watched her and did not say a word, held her and did not say a word she could not bear. She was growing accustomed to being cherished, to being called _Beloved_ without any hint of malice or spite. She did not dream of coffins nor swords. She made cakes to see Gabriel eat them and she poured out his tea from a height so he would admire her slender wrist, her strength. She sang, when she worked, and he sang with her.

“I looked, but I’d already known, you see,” she told him. She only said that and he was such a patient man, Gabriel Oak, he did not speak. “How many days, so many days, I’d known before he said a word.” Gabriel didn’t ask how she knew or when, because he guessed or he didn’t want to; that she’d learnt it from Frank’s indifferent caresses and her unsatisfied hunger, from a hand slapped against a table instead of her cheek. She would not say a word about a baby when she suspected what the next winter would bring. She could not risk Gabriel’s valid suspicion, his hands careful at her tender breasts, his hand at her elbow when she stumbled, dizzy, crossing the Turkey rug. She would not let their joy have the smallest shadow, she could give him that, sweet, thoughtful, knowing man that he was.

“You don’t have to tell me everything. Only the truth,” Gabriel had whispered, after they’d made their vows and their friends had left for the celebration, casks of ale and roast mutton, a cake topped with candied violets. He meant it so she’d kissed him, her lips parted; she tasted him and she breathed with his same breath, two souls in a perfect union.

He never asked her. Not while she smiled nor laughed nor when she cried out his name in her travail, shrieking for him to come. They named the baby Verity and Gabriel’s hand covered their daughter’s back, felt her small, determined breaths. 

“I’ll tell you everything,” Bathsheba murmured, over the nursing baby.

“You’ve done, beloved. You’ve done fair well,” Gabriel said. The chapter ended. The baby cried, impatient, wanting to fill her belly.

**Author's Note:**

> ZoeSong asked for me to write a version of an idea she had, but I can never leave well enough alone, so instead of answering the key question she posed, I flipped the frame. I hope it works anyway.


End file.
